U.S. authorities urge Toyota to issue mandatory recall over floor mat

Saturday 17th October, 06:52 AM JST

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11 Comments

suebe36d at 07:50 PM JST - 17th October

Do away with that floor mat altogether - just vacuum your car weekly or every other day if heavy user.
TheGreatSantini at 08:32 AM JST - 18th October

Nowhere is mentioned the exact problem with the floor mats.

In any event that GM? Chrysler? that got bailed out by the Obama administration is not complaining!

Those crazy yanks!
kirakira25 at 10:00 AM JST - 18th October

I am still not really understanding how a floor mat could have caused this crash if it was properly fixed. Did the accelerator pedal have some kind of sticky substance on it that fixed it to the mat? Did the pedal slip under the mat? If so, why couldn`t the driver have just kicked or pulled the mat off?

Does anyone have a link to more detailed information? I can`t understand why the exact info is not being released to the public - surely it is in our best interests?
sfjp330 at 10:05 AM JST - 18th October

Was these floor mats factory, dealer or after market product that was installed on the accidents? There were two major accidents that resulted from floor mats, one in San Diego and 2007 in San Jose. This is two incidents out of over 10,000,000 cars that was sold by Toyota. Is there other related instances of this floor mat evidence of accident? I don't believe there should be any recall other than to warn the consumers to clean the floor mat area and also, see if they are loose. It's more of a common sense.

Ford had problems with Pinto gas tank in the late 70's and GM with the side gas tank that was designed outside the frame in the 90's. Both burst into flames on high impact. A bad design.
Suzu1 at 01:14 AM JST - 19th October

There have been at least five fatal crashes involving runaway Toyota and Lexus vehicles manufactured by Toyota Motor Corp. Reports of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles has resulted in nine federal inquiries and investigations since 2000. The investigations suggest that Toyota's ignition, transmission and braking systems may make it difficult for drivers to combat sudden or unintended accelerations and safely recover, regardless of their cause. One remedy being considered by Toyota implicitly acknowledges what critics have been saying for almost 10 years: that the company's highly computerized engine control system lacks a fail-safe mechanism that can quickly extinguish sudden acceleration events, whether they are caused by floor mats, driver errors or even unknown defects in the electronic control system, as alleged in some lawsuits. One obvious line of defense is to simply shut off the engine, a step that may not be intuitive on the Lexus ES 350. The car has a push-button start system, activated by the combination of a wireless electronic fob carried by the driver and a button on the dashboard. But once the vehicle is moving, the engine will not shut off unless the button is held down for a full three seconds -- a period of time in which Saylor's car (involved in the San Diego crash) would have traveled 528 feet. A driver may push the button repeatedly, not knowing it requires a three-second hold. The other common defense tactic advised by experts is to simply shift a runaway vehicle into neutral. But the ES 350 is equipped with an automatic transmission that can mimic manual shifting, and its shift lever on the console has a series of gates and detents that allow a driver to select any of at least four forward gears. The arrangement of those gear selections could make it difficult to shift from a forward gear directly into neutral in a panic situation.
The most obvious impulse for any driver experiencing sudden acceleration is to apply the brakes. But when an engine goes to full throttle and is speeding at 120 mph, the brake might not stop the car. The ES 350 and most other modern vehicles are equipped with power-assisted brakes, which operate by drawing vacuum power from the engine. But when an engine opens to full throttle, the vacuum drops, and after one or two pumps of the brake pedal the power assist feature disappears. As a result, a driver would have to apply enormous pressure to the brake pedal to stop the car, and if the throttle was wide open might not be able to stop it at all, safety experts say. Indeed, a 2007 study by federal highway safety officials showed that braking distance and force on a Lexus ES 350 increased fivefold when the throttle was wide open. And evidence introduced in sudden acceleration trials suggests that it can take up to 225 pounds of pressure on a brake pedal to arrest a runaway vehicle, far more than most drivers can muster from a seated position.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-toyota-recall18-2009oct18,0,6027180,full.story
Yelnats at 11:18 AM JST - 19th October

I never buy floor mats. They are stupid. When you eventually junk the car, and remove the mats, there is a beautiful carpet there. Why?
sfjp330 at 02:33 AM JST - 20th October

Suzu1;

You only talk of ES350 in San Diego accident, but the fatality in San Jose accident involve Camry which has manual shut off on the ignition. Other four fatalities involve all ES350?
societymike at 10:01 AM JST - 20th October

A.) it's not really the floormats, that's just the distraction.

B.) it's actually the design of the pedal and the "drive by wire" system with these models instead of the old type throttle cable.

C.) the REAL problem here is a huge lack of drivers training. Any knowledgable or experienced driver would simply, put the car in neutral and stop the car. You can also turn the car off by holding the Push-on/off button for more than a second. You can also READ THE DRIVERS MANUAL which clearly cautions getting the pedal jammed and tells you how to prevent or stop it.
mygrain at 10:55 PM JST - 20th October

Simply not true SocietyMike. “You can also turn the car off by holding the Push-on/off button for more than a second.” Toyota engineers have stated that at such high RPM’s the button starter system could “take minutes”, not seconds.

And once again what we have here is another attempt to blame the drivers for a seriously defective product. I could only shake my head in disgust upon hearing Toyoda admit that Toyota had not taken the problem seriously in the past, (That’s way back in 2004 people !) Now he wants Toyota owners to try and solve the problem themselves. Gee, just do this and maybe that and the problem should be solved. Wrong !!! What’s next from Toyota execs ? They want us to replace our own brake systems like the ones that caused the 95,000 recalls just a month or so ago ? And hey, maybe I should be soldering in my own roll bar now that we know their rollover data has been manipulated. And what to do about those hybrid engines using patent protected designs by American engineers ? Any suggestions for that little mess ? Toyota is in deep doo. They only have themselves to blame. Nothing but pure greed and a “profits before customer safety” attitude. This could hopefully be the nail in this company’s coffin.
sfjp330 at 03:28 AM JST - 22nd October

And what to do about those hybrid engines using patent protected designs by American engineers ? Any suggestions for that little mess ?

So if a company has a technology that could be a huge boon for drivers and the environment and they sit on it for a decade, does a competing company that finally does something with it and makes it a success really need to be sued repeatedly for using it? Paice seems to be somewhat at fault for not being effective enough with a smart technology.
mygrain at 11:21 PM JST - 24th October

Well here we are a week later and Toyota executives have felt so upset and distraught over the deaths of four family members in San Diego that they have gone out and done the absolute unthinkable… “nothing” ! Yep, that’s right. Even though the current president got on the tube and phoned up his media cronies to cry crocodile tears about the horrific way the family died, when all is said and done nothing has changed. As we see here Toyota is even going as far as to make US officials “beg” for them to do the right thing and make the recall mandatory. I even heard the recall was supposed to include Japan, but that has yet to occur… even though the same problems have occurred. What is it going to take, more deaths ?